Scripting therapeutic screen stories : animating the healing potential of film narratives

Beyond entertainment, animated narratives can potentially induce psychological healing, termed “individuation.” Stories exist in many forms, like literature, film and conversation, as well as in the human mind, or “psyche.” These “self-narratives” use life experience to shape consciousness. Therefore, effective storytelling based on archetypal myths can restructure the psyche. Film narratives communicate meaning through symbols, termed “textual cues”, while screenwriters employ specific templates, which organise story information into familiar structures. These guide audiences towards predetermined meaning. Through bibliotherapy, which is the use of literature for therapeutic purposes, audiences project their unconscious content onto narrative components that resonate with it. Ego-consciousness can then integrate this material. Films, like dreams, incorporate raw unconscious material, labelled “archetypes”, and symbols, conscious interpretations of the archetypes, to affect unconscious reactions that facilitate psychological growth. When a narrative’s protagonist undertakes the “Hero’s Journey”, a quest’s twelve stages that enact change, they guide audiences through a metaphorical portrayal of individuation. Audiences can then mimic this path to prompt their own inner journey. Animation augments storytelling’s healing ability because its fantasised appearance transforms individuation’s threatening psychological information to reveal wisdom. Since screenwriters delve into the collective unconscious to create stories, they initiate audience healing. Thus, they represent modern society’s shamans. By creating a screenplay for an animated short feature film and discussing how screenwriters can induce psychological healing, I demonstrate the therapeutic potential of film narratives

Smartphone Apps for Disasters: Workshop Lesson Plan

This instruction was designed to be delivered to a Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) or a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT). Instructional Goal #1: Using a personal smartphone connected to the internet, learners will download medical information apps, before deployment to a disaster environment. Instructional Goal #2: Recalling real and simulated patient care situations that required additional medical information, learners will identify and search smartphone apps for relevant, current, authoritative, medical information that could be applied to the care of individual patients in disasters

Steer clear of red herrings: Grant v Mahler Hygiene’s philosophical advice to the World Health Assembly

Dear Participant of the 76th World Health Assembly, May 2023 I greet you on behalf of the World Philosophical Forum, Athens (cc to the 78th UN General Assembly October 2023) while taking the opportunity to call on the good offices of the international community to better direct thought and support to deal with existential problems and to restate our expressed views that applied philosophy can modulate behavior and influence actions to slow down the ongoing unraveling of complex biological systems that prop up human consciousness, bring pause to the precipitation of a nuclear big bang and provide insight into the problem space of a technologically manipulated future of limited freewill through artificial intelligence

Helping Principal Investigators Comply with the NIH Public Access Policy

Recognizing the consequences of non-compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy (NIHPAP), Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library worked to identify NIHPAP non-compliant papers by GW faculty authors and help Principal Investigators (PI\u27s) and their delegates get them into PubMed Central (PMC)

Work and Unemployment in Post-Industrial Times

In New Zealand, rises and falls in the rate of unemployment over the past twenty years have inevitably produced statements of hope for a return to full employment. lt is suggested that the continued simple optimism about full employment has obscured alternative explanations for especially long term unemployment and delayed genuine attempts to make adequate provision for it: provisions that relate to the nature of modern work and give more meaning to the lives of unemployed people. The paper will develop an alternative explanation of unemployment based on an analysis of worldwide changes in the nature of work and show how it applies in New Zealand. The explanation leads to different ways of thinking about unemployment and the wide range of experiences within the unemployed conditions and expands the possibilities for suitable policies. A crucial central ingredient for unemployment policy in post-industrial times is an effective national system of life-long learning. The paper finds that provisions for lifelong learning in New Zealand still favour the well-endowed and the well-heeled and are seriously deficient for those whom unemployment hits hardest, creating damaging ripple effects in other aspects of social life. With adequate provisions it is suggested that unemployment can be regarded as a transition in the life course when new kinds of work and new ways of contributing to the community can be explored

Design and conduct of 'Xtreme Alps' : a double-blind, randomised controlled study of the effects of dietary nitrate supplementation on acclimatisation to high altitude

The study of healthy human volunteers ascending to high altitude provides a robust model of the complex physiological interplay that emulates human adaptation to hypoxaemia in clinical conditions. Nitric oxide (NO) metabolism may play an important role in both adaptation to high altitude and response to hypoxaemia during critical illness at sea level. Circulating nitrate and nitrite concentrations can be augmented by dietary supplementation and this is associated with improved exercise performance and mitochondrial efficiency. We hypothesised that the administration of a dietary substance (beetroot juice) rich in nitrate would improve oxygen efficiency during exercise at high altitude by enhancing tissue microcirculatory blood flow and oxygenation. Furthermore, nitrate supplementation would lead to measurable increases in NO bioactivity throughout the body. This methodological manuscript describes the design and conduct of the ‘Xtreme Alps’ expedition, a double-blind randomised controlled trial investigating the effects of dietary nitrate supplementation on acclimatisation to hypobaric hypoxia at high altitude in healthy human volunteers. The primary outcome measure was the change in oxygen efficiency during exercise at high altitude between participants allocated to receive nitrate supplementation and those receiving a placebo. A number of secondary measures were recorded, including exercise capacity, peripheral and microcirculatory blood flow and tissue oxygenation. Results from this study will further elucidate the role of NO in adaption to hypoxaemia and guide clinical trials in critically ill patients. Improved understanding of hypoxaemia in critical illness may provide new therapeutic avenues for interventions that will improve survival in critically ill patients

Control of Ranunculus on the Rivers Spey, Dee and Don. Final report

To undertake a literature review on the efficacy of Roundup® Pro Biactive® (and other similar herbicides) in controlling aquatic plants, including Ranunculus spp., in riverine environments. In addition, to undertake a review of the ecotoxicological effects of the preparation on non-target organisms (Atlantic salmon, otter, freshwater pearl mussel and sea lamprey); • Provide a report summarising the results of the literature review; and • Provide recommendations as to the type/extent of future scoping study/experimental investigations that may be required based upon the outcomes of the literature review